o the spiritual mind is only _eclipse_. When there is an
eclipse of the sun it does not mean that the sun is blotted out of the
heavens: it only means that there is a temporary obstruction between it
and us. If we wait a little, it passes. Love cannot die. Its forms
may change, even its objects, but its life is the life of the universe.
It is not death, but sleep: not loss, but eclipse. The love is only
transfigured into something more ethereal and heavenly than ever
before. Happy to have friends on earth, but happier to have friends in
heaven.

And it need not be even eclipse, except in outward form. Communion
with the unseen can mean true correspondence with all we have loved and
lost, if only our souls were responsive. The highest love is not
starved by the absence of its object; it rather becomes more tender and
spiritual, with more of the ideal in it. Ordinary affection, on a
lower plane, dependent on physical attraction, or on the earthly side
of life, naturally crumbles to dust when its foundation is removed.
But love is independent of time or space, and as a matter of fact is
purified and intensified by absence. Separation of friends is not a
physical thing. Lives can be sundered as if divided by infinite
distance, even although materially they are near each other. This
tragedy is often enough enacted in our midst.

The converse is also true; so that friendship does not really lose by
death: it lays up treasure in heaven, and leaves the very earth a
sacred place, made holy by happy memories. "The ruins of Time build
mansions in Eternity," said William Blake, speaking of the death of a
loved brother, with whose spirit he never ceased to converse. There
are people in our homes and our streets whose highest life is with the
dead. They live in another world. We can see in their eyes that their
hearts are not here. It is as if they already saw the land that is
very far off. It is only far off to our gross insensate senses.

The spiritual world is not outside this earth of ours. It includes it
and pervades it, finding a new centre for a new circumference in every
loving soul that has eyes to see the Kingdom. So, to hold commerce
with the dead is not a mere figure of speech. Heaven lies about us not
only in our infancy, but all our lives. We blind ourselves with dust,
and in our blindness lay hold feverishly of the outside of life,
mistaking the fugitive and evanescent for the truly permanent.